Gin and Topics: Strawberry Pie and a Gun Leaving People Speechless

I really thought yesterday was Friday. I got up to write Gin and Topics and got halfway through before I realized it was only Thursday.

What a disappointment!

But that’s OK. Friday is here now. Only one thing…it’s daylight savings this weekend. So you’re going to lose an hour. Try not to be too grouchy about it.

And…for all of you at SxSW? I’m officially envious. Have tons of fun, learn lots, and bring back good stories to share!

5. Strawberry Pie. Grannies are for pononin noobs! OK. I have no idea what that means, but this is pretty funny. Thanks to Ifdy Perez for sending it to me.

4. Google Puts Feet On the Street. My Marketing in the Round co-author, Geoff Livingston, writes a compelling blog post about how Google is hoping to compete with Facebook and others…by putting people on the street. They’re going into businesses and showing them how to use Google+. Methinks this is cheating. See what you think.

3. Facebook Rolls Out Timeline for Businesses. Hopefully you didn’t miss the big announcement last week, but if you did, Facebook has finally opened Timeline for businesses. We love it! We still have some work to do on the Arment Dietrich page, but it’s getting there. It’s so well organized, easy to look at, and easy to find conversations.

2. Japanese Ray Gun Leaves People Speechless. OK. I’m pretty sure I should not find this as entertaining as I do, but… It’s a ray gun that, when pointed at a person, renders them speechless. The owners of the company that make it say it will be useful in meetings to get the loud mouth to stop talking or in social situations when one person is commandeering the conversation. I could have used it on the El the other day!

1. KONY 12. This is pretty incredible. KONY 2012 is a film by Invisible Children to bring Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony to justice and free the thousands of “invisible children” he has abducted and pressed into soldiering and sex-slavery. They’re calling for a global grassroots campaign on April 20 to find Kony and have him arrested.

I suppose getting Kony would be a start; there are others like him but maybe if the momentum is started it will at least get the ball rolling. What about Darfur; it's just as bad if not worse. At least with movements like this, maybe you can actually feel like something is being done.

I got one of those Ray guns, my wife didn't think it was funny............

I looked into KONY when people started asking others to point out Uganda on a map (It's in Africa's armpit btw). Whil Wheaton shared a post on Tumblr that makes Invisible children look almost as bad as Joseph Kony. Of course, i have a sore spot for charities who spend most of their money on the owners, making movies, and trying to make their owners famous. I like kids and all, but any money you send over there is going to go to a group that abducts children. Kony is the head of the LRM (I think, something Liberation Movement) and the dictators who run the armies who fight him Kidnap and militarize children as well.

It's really just a mess. That's why I would rather spend my time watching videos about Granny making Pie! lol

The Google story is interesting. As platforms seek to monetize what they are offering for free, they are really getting more aggressive. I met with a client this morning who says he has had nonstop calls from Facebook trying to get him to place ads. And Yelp is getting pretty weird about trying to get businesses to pay. I find that a real turnoff.

@KenMueller They really are Ken. Facebook's whole Strategy is going to have us paying to use the Platform if it keeps up at this pace, and Google pretty much says "Yeah, we're going to collect all your personally identifiable information now and use it for profit, so you better not do anything you want to keep private". They're already making money hand over fist, and that's the problem with going public - you can't feed enough profits to organization. It requires continuous growth, which requires more profits, which will likely be the downfall of Facebook.

@ginidietrich@etelligence The interesting thing is that there are a lot of critics, and Invisible Children has done a great job of answering them on their blog, as well as on national TV this morning. A lot of the differences are semantics, and they really did clear up a lot of the misconceptions. I've been following and supporting IC since their beginnings and know some folks who work with them. They are very genuine and have great motives.